The otherworldly musical duo of Greek singer and lute player George Xylouris and Australian drummer Jim White is an intercontinental match made in musical heaven! As a duo, White's wild n' fluid percussion enmeshes itself with Xylouris' inventive playing and resonant vocals to completely buck convention or trend - it's just a totally mind-opening experience from the opening cymbal crash on record or in person.  
 
Having just finished up gigs across Europe, Xylouris White are about to embark... (read more)

Less than six months since the release of Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, our hero Bill Callahan takes a victory lap through the country with a fresh (digital only!) single consisting of two, infallibly Callahan-ed up cover songs! Bill's take on Lee Clayton's classic, "If You Could Touch Her at All," walks a mile in some BIG shoes--by which we mean the boots of Willie, Waylon and George Jones, all of whom did great versions of the song-- casually and confidently. With the classic... (read more)

When it's all looked back upon and counted, the moments may seem like few in this life that we're required to stand tall and shine out to the world before us. Yet they are legion. With "Squid Eye", from the now-out I Made a Place, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy counts the ways, extolling the promise of a future once we're prepared to "take from the awful an awesome". Cascades of guitar, flute and sax herald this celebration of knowing and persevering, as strength... (read more)

A new year is on the horizon. While many of us are struggling through the inevitable tangled mess that has amassed over the course of the last quarter or two, with the finish line in blurred details somewhere ahead of us, OM have already moved on. Thoughts of this year, and of their splendid BBC Radio 1 release, while pleasurable, have already been dealt with - and now, 2020 is fast being written into the books. This Friday, tickets go on sale for a month... (read more)

Hamerkop is a pair of Baltimore-based sound nerds: Annabel Alpers, the composer, singer and instrumentalist formerly of New Zealand's Bachelorette, and Adam Cooke, a Baltimorean drummer/audio engineer with credits that include Beach House, Wye Oak and Future Islands. Together, they have created a song-cycle that contrasts the often-mundane (yet often satisfying) everyday world with that of the idealized, longed-for fantasy, to find the spaces in between these things, the place where we all feel good about our existence.

Hamerkop's... (read more)